Sunday, January 2, 2011

Death Panels Are Back

What did you get for Christmas? Maybe a new cell phone, some clothes, a TV or video game?

You also got the beginnings of a federally funded death panel. Merry Christmas!

When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

How nice. This is our president in a nutshell: Public finds out about horrid policy, opposes it, Congress acquiesces and stops it, only to have Obama instate it by executive fiat anyway.

Palin was able to shame the Democrats into dropping aggressive end-of-life counseling from ObamaCare during passage, but like everything else about the most disastrous bill of the modern era, it was a lie. The Times approvingly reports that the Administration is quietly restoring these provisions through regulation, specifically a Medicare policy that will “pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.”

It’s quite simple, really. For ObamaCare to have even the slightest chance of meeting it’s cost goals, it’s going to have to stop paying for expensive end-of-life care (and other expensive treatments…forget about new AIDS, cancer, and diabetes treatments…they aren’t happening).

The new policy pays doctors to conduct “voluntary advance care planning to discuss end-of-life treatment” during annual checkups. Dr. Maria J. Silveira of the University of Michigan describes the sort of question doctors might ask: “If you have another heart attack and your heart stops beating, would you want us to try to restart it? Do you want to go on a breathing machine for the rest of your life? When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay your death?”

Just imagine how future directives will shape the way these questions are asked, as the utterly bankrupt ObamaCare system desperately tries to shift resources away from expensive end-of-life care… followed by the directive to abandon care entirely, based on “quality of life” equations that will become increasingly harsh for anyone who isn’t a member of the political elite. The government can get a lot of people to sign away critical care simply by asking their insidious questions of young and healthy patients, who are much more likely to insist they don't want to lie in a hospital bed with a bunch of tubes stuck in them.

ObamaCare isn’t just bad policy. It isn’t just ridiculously expensive. It’s twisted, sick, perverted, and disgusting. It’s wrong on so many levels any level-headed and right thinking person should run from it screaming in terror.